Monday, 18 May 2015

A
possible sign that Turkey’s notoriously inaccurate election polls may for once
be on the right track is the increasingly shrill and often bizarre behaviour of
the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the run-up to June’s general election.

Since
storming to power in 2002 the AKP has swept every election with overwhelming
majorities and maintained its strong grip on single-party government. Now, due
a host of factors including a weak economy, fatigue with President Tayyip
Erdoğan, corruption and disunity within AKP that tight grip is being
challenged. One of the main threats is coming from the Kurdish-based People’s
Democratic Party (HDP) with its charismatic, pop-star-like leader Selahattin
Demirtaş. If Demirtaş can lead his party over the absurd 10% barrier to enter
parliament it can pose a serious threat to AKP’s ability to rule by itself
without a coalition.

The
panicked response of AKP to this threat indicates that the polls showing HDP
close to the 10% goal might just be accurate. Elections in Turkey have always
been raucous affairs with accusations of wholesale vote rigging, threats of
violence, massive demonstrations, and lots and lots of loud noise. But this one
is going even further.

AKP
minions, led by Erdoğan who is supposed to be above such things as president,
are busy labelling the Kurdish party as:

·Terrorists

·Atheists

·And
my favourite, ‘Zoroastrians’. For
those of you whose knowledge of Zoroastrians is as limited as mine I recommend
a wonderful book about remnants of ancient Middle Eastern religions called Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms by Gerard
Russell. He writes that the Zoroastrian faith dominated Persia until the
Islamic conquest in the 7th century. There are only a very few
Zoroastrians remaining in modern Iran, but, even so, Erdoğan now counts them as
an existential threat to Turkey in the form of a Kurdish political party.

Assaults on the
HDP are growing beyond verbal absurdities. So far there have more than 50
attacks on HDP election offices across the country. Yesterday there were
serious bomb attacks on two HDP offices in the cities of Adana and Mersin. Two
senior AKP officials condemned the attacks, and no one has claimed responsibility.
And no suspects have been found.

Scene after bomb at HDP office in Mersin

A sign of AKP
desperation is the fact that Ahmet Davutoğlu, the prime minister and official
head of the party, has been almost completely side-lined. He is perceived as a
weak campaigner, and Erdoğan has gladly leapt into the breach with his almost daily
fire-and-brimstone speeches about the catastrophe that awaits Turkey if the AKP
fails to win enough deputies to form a single-party government.

In another indication
of AKP nervousness, some party stalwarts are demanding the few remaining
opposition media outlets be shut down and their assets confiscated.

Then there is the very strange
incident of rumours about a possible Turkish military incursion into Syria, an
incursion that could cause the elections to be postponed thereby staving off
potential embarrassment for the AKP. These rumours were quickly followed by the
surprise decision of the Chief of Staff of the Turkish army to take a 15-day
medical leave. It is well known that the army is firmly opposed to any such
Syrian adventure, and the absence of the Chief of Staff makes any move into
Syria very difficult. The conspiracy theorists are having a field day with this
one, but it will be quite a while before anything resembling the truth emerges.

Even more serious are the mounting
concerns about voter fraud. With the judiciary and the theoretically
independent election commission firmly under government control many people are
concerned that the results will mysteriously turn out to be in AKP’s favour,
regardless of the actual vote. A friend in London recalled that in the last
election there were more votes cast in several districts than the total number
of registered voters in those districts. There are also leaked reports of massive
government efforts to ‘control’ the results. Opposition parties say they will
send thousands of monitors to the polling sites, but it is not clear how
effective they will be.

Iran faced widespread protests after the flawed 2009 election

This is where Erdoğan has to be very
careful. It is one thing if HDP legitimately fails to surpass the 10% barrier.
It is quite another if the party suspects that electoral fraud kept them out of
parliament. Erdoğan should remember the 2009 eruption of the Green Revolution
in Iran following the disputed election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Similar accusations in Turkey would go viral
in a matter of moments leaving the so-called Kurdish ‘peace process’ in
tatters.

Erdoğan may or may not like the results of this election, But one hopes he realizes that nothing
would improve Turkey’s democratic standing in this troubled region more than
letting the results, whatever they may be, unfold without interference.

Saturday, 9 May 2015

ATHENS
-- Fatigue, exhaustion and frustration seem to have descended on Greece like a
cloud, dampening the natural exuberance and underlying optimism of many people.
They are simply worn out by speculation on the outcome of endless negotiations
that achieve nothing, the daily struggle with total uncertainty about their
economic future, and the barrage of contradictory proclamations from an inexperienced
government. “We are on the verge of an
agreement with the creditors! There is no agreement! We might agree to
privatise some state assets. We will NEVER sell or lease a single state asset!”
And so it goes. Meanwhile hapless citizens are caught in the middle of a
frightening maze.

“If
you’re going to shoot me, shoot me! Just get on with it,” cried one anguished
citizen. “I’m tired of this mess. We’ve been dealing with it since 2008 and
there is no end in sight. I just want it over with, one way or the other.” One
housewife said she hardly leaves the house these days. “I sit home on my sofa
all day watching TV hoping to see some developments. Nothing. All I’m doing is wearing out sofa
fabric.”

How many Greeks feel at the moment

More
galling perhaps is the loss of self-esteem. “We used to be proud to be Greek. We
were considered the home of democracy, the worthy heirs of the likes of Plato,
Aristotle, and the great playwrights. Now Greece is considered just another
unruly little country stuck onto the bottom of the Balkans. It’s embarrassing
to admit that you’re Greek these days,” says one Brussels-based Greek.

In
the current, rapidly deteriorating economic situation cash is king. No one
knows if the banks and all their ATM machines are suddenly going to close.
Tourists are advised to bring lots of cash. Many businesses are forced to pay
cash for raw materials because suppliers limit credit to only the largest of
companies. The central government has stripped municipalities of their spare
cash in a desperate attempt to meet pension payments and pay creditors.

The
Syriza government swept into power in January with the promise that it would
stand up for the ‘little man’, roll back the hated austerity program, and force
the country’s creditors to renegotiate a much more favourable package of
repayments. This simply hasn’t happened. A lethal combination of inexperience,
arrogance and party disunity led the new government to badly overplay its
already weak hand.

For
four months the Greek people have been living on promises of a better tomorrow.
But that tomorrow keeps receding further and further into the distance. Faced
with an intractable Eurozone making demands that a fractured, internally
chaotic Syriza simply cannot deliver the government faces some unpalatable
choices that could rip the party into its constituent parts.

Some more bizarre members of the
ruling party want to dump the whole negotiating process. They openly call for
leaving the Eurozone in favour of the old currency, the drachma. They ignore the horrific costs of such a move for the
average citizen they claim to represent. Among other things, this move would
certainly reduce food supplies in the country. Greece imports about 75% of
everything it eats and drinks. How are the stores going to pay for these goods
with a sharply devalued drachma? How is the present generation of Greeks going to react to shortages it has never seen?

While
most of the world has moved on from this Stalinist economic view, it does
represent a strong faction within the government, and demonstrates clearly why
any agreement with the Eurozone could split the party wide open. This partly
explains the hesitant, confusing approach of the Greek government toward any
deal with its creditors to keep Greece in the Euro. The Syriza government
itself may not have a clear, unified approach. Who speaks for the
government? Ministers are constantly
contradicting each other. The government is caught in a bind. Sign a deal, break
up the party. Reject a deal, lose Greece. That’s a tough choice for a party
filled with people trying to run a country on the basis of revolutionary
rhetoric more suited to university agitation than actually running a real country.

Does Tsipras even want a deal with the creditors?

Unable,
or unwilling, to make that choice the party may resort to a referendum to solve
the dilemma. Let the people choose whether to stay in the Euro or return to the
drachma. Fine in theory. Difficult in
reality. How exactly will the question be worded? Will the banks have to be
closed during the period of the referendum to stop massive withdrawals? Will
capital controls have to be imposed? Will people clean out the supermarket
shelves and start hoarding just in case the country goes back to the drachma? The only thing that is clear at
this point is that the resilience and endurance of the Greek people are stretched
to their limits.

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About Me

I worked as a fund manager and investment banker in Turkey and the Middle East for 25 years. Over the years I have travelled extensively throughout the region and have met many of the leading government officials, business and cultural leaders. I am married to a Greek and now divide my time between London, Turkey, and an island in the Aegean.